June, 2022: Door is A Jar magazine
The Summer 2022 issue of Door Is A Jar magazine includes my poem “Matinée.” The link to purchase is below.

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Swing
 
Swinging, gawking
Over a silken pond
of water glossy, catching the scent of inky sky
or cloud-winds on snarling flight
I tilted, screened behind the stilted,
wretched spruce
A clump of dead needles crumble
 
And I sang the same song,
The melody rung
When resting at the curbside
Months before these
Barely sun-pierced hours
 
Now far flung, the wrong
I would soon and sometimes forget
Had forgotten
That is aloneness in my gut
That brings the sick feeling
 
I flew far with fairy wings
With sweet serenading angels
deceiving far too far too long
 
First appeared in Whetstone, 2004
Alternative Endings
 
The insects ate the poppies we planted
The clematis never grew
Geoffrey was crushed by the wheel
No one knew he was sleeping under it
Henry was poisoned
The car only gets rustier
The doors squeak
The salt and slush
Have ruined my black suede boots
 
Grandma died in her apartment
Lying on the floor
The door was locked shut
Her daughter broke the chain
Winter chews its way through the grass
Summer peels away the paint
Yet, we eagerly await it.     
 
 First appeared in Apollo’s Lyre, August 2009 

Poems published in Poet's Haven:
Pacific Vignette, Smoky Quartz


Oceanfront Rental
 
I have seen this house under arrest
And the mortar makes my teeth ache
and my eyes are as bandaged as blinds on the windows
so I fall faithfully backward to the floor
to tell the story back to you.
Tiled. Rewriting you.
On the walls, on the floor. I follow your words.
I have the twisted head of fate. Write it on the mirror unto me.
With a decadent shade of violet lipstick, I pause at the glass.
 
She was a blue blonde.
A black blonde. An itty-bitty blonde.
Her nails a Revlon shade of mossy green
She was lost in the high grass. The high tide. The high sierra.
She sniffed her fingertips. The cocksweat and day-old nicotine.
She held her hand up high. In a “wet and wild” kind of way.
Shouting, "Peek-a-boo, little Earth."
 
And I know this girl, as she sank unconscious,
into the vinyl upholstery of a yellow Ford Escort
I used to see her parallel parked by the edge of the sea.
Virginia Slims and cocaine in a tray in her lap
 
She was clammy. The back of her neck stuck to the headrest.
Her pulse was rapid. And quick. And slow.
I held her hand. When she uttered, "Some boys."
I shut up.
I could have been so much more.
She jumped out, but I made it in time to the window.

​c2011